Simon G

Leonid, I never said she didn't have a place in history and I'm in England. She was a curiosity though, a moment in history and had she not had famous students who actually did go on to change the world in terms of dance and dance theatre one does wonder how enduring that legend would have been. It's wrong however to call her an architect of modern dance, she wasn't. Nor to put forward a theory that hers was a technique which had any kind of lasting impact on the shape of dance, and one defintely cannot say that her dance was that of a dance historian or reconstructionist - it was a hugely personal take on eastern religions and philosophy. At the DenisShawn school she would try and tutor the pupils in Indian philosophy albeit highly badly as she couldn't read or understand hindi, urdu or sanskrit so what she was giving her students was a bowlderised version of her beliefs with an "eastern" flavour. Moreover when new dancers came to her she catagorised them according to ethnic type she thought they best fitted. The 22-year-old, tiny, dark Martha Graham was written off by St Denis as a total loss, but perhaps she could be fitted into something "Japanese". St Denis endured and succeeded precisely because she was a legitimate artist and by all accounts very great dancer, despite her rather scatterbrained and hokey spirituality (and let's not forget this Eastern-influenced, quasi mysticism was exceedingly popular amongst many in the upper middle classes in the early 20th century). But it's also true that Shawn was the love of her life, which is sad as he most certainly could never love her sexually or romantically, and ultimately her downfall. Shawn isn't remembered with anything like the reverance or importance or St Denis. Moreover, he wasn't the only one who made a legitimate career out of homosexual desire within the dance world. Dance, with its perceived looser morals has always been a magnet for sexual opportunists; but really what's so wrong with that? George Platt Lynes, probably one of the greatest dance photographers of all time was drawn to dance because he was gay, liked photographing naked men and dancers were more sexually liberated than laymen and more willing to get their kit off in the name of art. Ditto Lincoln Kirstein the greatest impresario since Diaghilev, sure he was educated, intellecutal and had an undoubted, profound love of ballet, but he also like sex and the dance and art worlds were a surefire way of having access to gay or sexually ambivalent young men. I don't see why you're so tetchy about discussing the seedier side of people's motivations especially when like in the case of Ted Shawn, those sexual desires were indeed instrumental for the path their careers took. The DenisShawn school was a magnet for gay men, and Shawn famously took advantage of that, it makes his achievements or life no less than they were, but to suggest otherwise or that he was morally pure and devoted to St Denis is as false as Ruth's notion of spirtual enlightenment and the prefix of St before her surname.

Leonid and rg, My sincere apologies for my misleading and prurient posts. I shall in future try to temper my oddities and gutter mentality. Simon

rg This is where historical accounts do vary. It was the David Belasco tour of Madame DuBarry where Dennis became St Dennis, some say it was Belasco who changed it, not just because she was saintly but there's another story that he renamed her because she refused his frequent sexual advances. In several other accounts it was after seeing the Isis poster for Egpytian Deities that she took it upon herself to rechristen St Dennis. I prefer the self naming following the cigarette poster epiphany - it's kind of sad, tawdry and banal and sums up for me what her art was really all about, surface glamour appropriated to pretty up a superficial approach.

Any biography of DennisShawn, any serious one will say the same - perhaps not so bluntly, but what's wrong with bluntness?. Shawn used St Denis and her fame for his own ends, to push his dance, which was roundly criticised as being greatly inferior to his "wife's", his sexuality and the way he used Denis Shawn as a magnet for young men, carrying on affairs literally under St Denis's nose in the marital house. Also he was a rabid exhibitionist, any of the photographs taken of him in poses plastiques bear testament to this, he loved to dress up in scanty g-strings etc and pose on stage or in photos imagining himself to be eros, Osiris, a little woodland nymph etc , and given his soft musculature and rather rubenesque lower half that probably wasn't the best idea. Graham was often used as a go between ST Denis and Shawn, his lovers and his tantrums, her auto biography and many other accounts including Doris Humphrey's and Agnes De Mille's all bear testatment to this, Shawn's peccadillos and his inferior status as an artist. These aren't aspersions, they're truths. The only reason why Graham came under his "tutelage" was because St Denis considered her completely untalented and pawned her off on her husband, while she kept Doris Humphrey for herself. And I did say to Shawn's credit he recognised her burgeoning talent. If anything Shawn's greatest contribution to dance in the longterm was the founding of Jacob's Pillow, BUT while he was alive his vehement criticism and attack of anything he considered NOT dance led him to publically denounce and undermine Graham, Cunningham, Limon and Humphrey. Because first and foremost Shawn was a second class act and a bit of a Charlatan and it's wrong to paint him as a visionary. There's a story that once when on tour Martha Graham wanted to insert her "Moorish Spanish dance" as imagined by Shawn into a dance extravaganza based around the Mayans or some other ancient civilisation, Shawn forbade her saying it was totally inappropriate and Graham responded "who'll ever know?"

aaahhhh, I wasn't going to answer because I think Lady Kay is a little bit naughty not doing her own research, if she were my student, that is if I were a teacher, I'd definitely have her stay late after school for six of the best. But liling's answer was off on the wrong tangent and the OCD in me wouldn't let me lie. so... Lady kay, Fuller, Duncan and St Denis can't legitimately be called the parents of modern dance, that accolade goes to Graham, Humphrey and Holm, but they can certainly be called the forerunners. To understand Fuller, Duncan and St Denis you have to recognise that in the early 20th century there was no dance tradition in the US, also the chief entertainment was Vaudeville Theatre, this was before the days of motion pictures. Vaudeville was a form of mixed review which included circus acts, dance acrobatic acts, novetly acts comedians and it was the arena where Fuller more or less started and ended - Fuller wasn't a dance innovater per se, but her act consisted of wafting/ moving around a stage dressed in voluminous silk, trailing large expanses of silk, which she had cleverly lit so that it seemed to have a life of its own. She was a curiosity, an oddity and probably very beautiful to watch - the "dance" itself was secondary, probably no more taxing than mild Dalcroze eurythmics - but she was a popular act and probably a lovely mover - but her influence, if any on further generations is negligible except as a remnant of a lost era and entertainment form. Duncan and St Denis is where it starts to get interesting. Duncan didn't see herself as a dancer, indeed she publically stated that she hated all forms of dance - if anything she probably saw herself as channelling a lost era of Sylvian Grecian harmony - it was romantic yet, naive however, by all accounts she was a phenomenal performer. Frederick Ashton cites her along with Pavlova as being his inspiration to become a dancer/choreographer and also one of the greatest performers he ever saw. Again the technique was highly personal, if you can even call it technique - Duncan had acolytes, but because she resisted all efforts to codify or even record her dance it's been lost. However, in 1975 Ashton created Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan for Lynn Seymour which Marie Rambert declared was exactly how she remembered Duncan to be: This is pretty much all there is of Duncan dancing: Tamara Rojo in Ashton's Five Brahams Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan There is an Isadora Dance Group how believe they carry on her "technique" and perform, yet this is just an echo of an echo, the art of Duncan was being lost even during her lifetime. Ruth St Denis is perhaps the most intriguing and bizarre and indeed hard to get a grasp on of these three women. St Denis was born ordinary Ruth Denis and like Fuller began her career within Vaudeville and popular concert dancing - what distinguished her was that she was a great dancer, however a great dancer without a technique or artistic ethos, though she yearned after real importance. The change came when on tour with a play called Madame Dubarry in 1907, in which she provided some pretty dances or no great importance, merely embellishments, she saw an advertisement for a popular brand of cigarettes of the day called Egyptian Deities Cigarettes. The advert showed the goddess Isis seated in a pool surrounded by irises - and this inspired her belief that dance must be a sacred art form, that a dancer was a conduit for the "other" she then changed her name to St Denis and began her artistic/spiritual path. And this is what's important to remember, St Denis was inspired by not merely Oriental, but Hindu, Egyptian, Japanese, Javanese dance and art and philosophy - but she never learned about any of these cultures in anything even approaching depth, it was a totally superficial reading. Her dances never attempted to study the original inspirations rather she would see pictures, images, snippets and imagine she understood the whole and create dances on these themes. Though she truly believed she was creating faithful, valid interpretations - it was a middle class woman, on a somewhat skewed mystical spiritual path. 25 seconds of an elderly St Denis dancing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jly99cBvDIo What saved her from banality and derision was that she was a great great artist. It wasn't merely Oriental dance she "appropriated" - one solo called Incense was a Sari clad hindu temple dancer, lighting incense in a great ornamental holder and then being moved by the "sacred spirit" to dance. Another solo called Spirit of the Sea had St Denis's head poking out of a great expanse of silk, held taught by her dancers at the corners of the stage (hidden) and St Denis rising and falling with the silk, dancing a sea nymph. And then of course there were her forayes into Orientalism, where she's get kitted out in Kimonos, Hopis etc and I daresay believe she was faithfully creating Japanese dances. There were Egyptian Goddess dances - Martha Graham's first role with Denis Shawn was that of a Priestess of Isis. Later with Ted Shawn there were Spanish dances, Senata Morisca and full length works such as Xochitl, which told the story of an Aztec Princess. And this is the important thing to remember is that this was dance theatre, dance pantomime saved from ridicule by the very real artisty of St Denis who viewed herself as a sacred creature and indeed until she met Shawn was a virgin. She was hugely respected as a dance artist at that time and was seen as real art, not mere Vaudeville. BUT the Denis Shawn Technique what there was of it, was not a technique as we now view Graham or Cunningham. As Carolyn Brown, Cunningham's greatest female dancer, whose first dance classes were in the DenisShawn style said: "denis shawn could produce a dancer, but not a modern or ballet dancer". St Denis's downfall began when she met Ted Shawn, her fame was such that people came to study with her, women & men, and Ted Shawn was a man hankering after stardom, he was also 15 years younger than St Denis and saw in the frustrated spinster a real hankering for sex and love. So he wooed her and married her and inveigled his way into equal billing and importance in the company structure and in 1916 DenisShawn was born with it's school and increased company commitments. Shawn was also a total homosexual and used his position as Dance Pater Familias of Denis Shawn to basically use the school and company as his own personal gay knocking shop. He was also an exhibitionist, liking to go naked or near as damn on stage and unlike St Denis he was not an artist of any note. St Denis was the calling card and meat of Denis Shawn, a fact Shawn recognised and hated absolutely. Because there was no dance training serious dance, in the US Denis Shawn in LA became a mecca for serious dance acolytes who were instructed in the curious take St Denis had on world dance, her own rather wafting and insipid techiques and in eastern philosophy and art as filtered through the naive world view of St Denis. It was to Denis Shawn that Doris Humphrey, Martha Graham, Charles Weidman came and also aspiring movie starlets, the most famous being Louise Brookes - Denis Shawn was something like a finishing school/dance school/ cult. St Denis initially wrote Graham off completely and gave her to Shawn to train, she preferred Doris Humphrey. Though Shawn to his credit did recognise Graham as a serious artist. St Denis' school and company collapsed for many reasons, St Denis was a poor businesswoman and her view of art was becoming increasingly anachronistic, the motion picture industry began to really take hold and the sham marriage with Shawn couldn't be sustained. With the collapse of the Denis Shawn school and organisation in 1927 Humphrey and Graham went to New York to carve out their own niches. Graham went back to Vaudeville dancing little ethnic numbers with the Greenwich Villiage Follies but she saw the futility of this course and hankered after her own place in the world. At first she decided to dance and teach in the DenisShawn style, and wrote to Shawn asking his permission to do so. Shawn wrote back demanding $500 for the rights which there was no way Graham could pay. So she refused and began to carve out her own technique - aided and abetted by Louis Horst, Denis Shawn's one-time music director. This is important and vital to remember, had Shawn been more generous the whole course of world art would have been radically different. She created her own style and technique because she had to. The flexed foot of Graham has nothing to do with dainty Oriental adorment - if anything it owes more the the Native American dances were the foot is used to strike and beat the earth, a culture Graham was fascinated by and which she studied in depth. Graham technique is the antithesis of the Denis Shawn artistic philosophy were everything was surface and superficial approximation. Graham was about wrenching meaning and movement and validity from every moment and body part. The flexed foot of Graham is a dramatic and deadly device, it owes nothing to her training with Denis who if she ever did flex did it for mere adornment. St Denis was lost because there was nothing there to keep. No technique to train a dancer properly, her dances were superficial oddities and curiosities and the intellectual ethos that underpinned it a lie or rather total misapprehension on St Denis's part. What does save it for the ages is the place of what was a veyr great dancer in dance history. But her most famous proteges went on to succeed in a longterm way she never did precisely because they reacted against her to create the polar opposite and not because they took her ideas forward.

Hey dirac, You know it's funny, at first I was completely of the same opinion as you, actually moreso, I couldn't stand Mad Men. My friends told me there was this great new show on from the US, I watched part of one episode and just couldn't get into it, I found it style over substance and moody looks in search of a plot. Then one night I watched the final episode of season one, where Betty let's slip to her shrink she knows about Don's affairs, Don does the Kodak presentation and Betty confides her misery to 9 year old Glen and fell head over heels in love with the show. I ordered the season 1 DVD, watched season 2 zealously and bought the DVD for posterity. BUT during season 2 again there came that niggling feeling that perhaps this was going nowhere, was too low key, the plotlines did seem to meander and Betty's emancipation only resulted in her getting pregnant and allowing Don back into the house. But then again I accepted this as a valid representation of 50's/60's womanhood - Betty Friedman's The Feminine Mystique played out as drama. What other choices would Betty have? The problem is with such a beautifully designed show, actually the design I think may very well be the greatest of any show I've ever watched, it's so easy to forget or fool oneself that it's enough and watching season 3 episode one that niggling feeling I had has come back full force. Sal's tryst in the bedroom with the bellhop boy really broke the "fourth wall", if you will for me, for the first time a totally modern sensibility in TV drama was evident something completely of the Millennium - and I feel that was a big mistake on the producers' part. It's still early days so it'll be interesting to see where it goes, I owe it that much but this opening episode, especially with the flashbacks of Don's "whoreson" roots was too easy, too forced.

Hey everyone, Is anyone else in love with Mad Men? The third season started yesterday and I have to admit I was a little disappointed, especially with the racier take that this season is following. I know that the producers stated in interview that to mirror the changing times as the series progresses into the 60s they were going to "sex" it up a bit, but I loved the previous seasons' playing by the rules of what could or couldn't be shown in the early 60s. The gay kiss especially irked me (and I'm not being homophobic here) I just feel that even in 1963 two men wouldn't have been shown actually kissing on TV or film and even though it was restrained, it just felt far too contemporary. Also I was praying the air stewardess wouldn't take her hands away and give a full frontal as that most definitely would have been absolutely verboten in 60s TV, and thankfully she didn't. Though it was rather clever on their part as they teased the audience as to "would she or wouldn't she?". I don't know, what did other people think, if you saw the episode, that is of course.

Hey Alexandra, I aim to please. I must admit I was in a playful mood when I made that post. A couple of things though about Swan Lake in particular, it's such a moneyspinner and to the world at large it's synonymous with ballet. I suppose it's no surprise that modern choreographers are so keen to reimagine it - it trades off the glamour/public preconceptions etc about dance. Also for ballet companies, I remember a couple of years ago reading an interview with Rachel Moore, executive director, in which she said the only way that new work can be programmed or commissioned is if it's run in conjunction with 80% Swan Lakes in a season. In regards to Graeme Murphy's "Swan Lake" when I saw it I just wondered why??. Australian Ballet is a fine classical company with a host of exciting and skilled classicists and technicians who are completely capable of performing the Petipa text as is. Australian Ballet have a Swan Lake in their rep, they certainly didn't need what amounted to a vanity project on the part of Murphy. It was most odd - especially the committing of Odette to an insane asylum. One kind of wonders what exactly the subtext was supposed to be - it's fairly safe to assume that a woman with a deeply entrenched victim complex, who's being forced to live as a bird and who makes inappropriately intense emotional connections with strange men might have a few mental health issues. It didn't need to be spelt out. I have a feeling that if Petipa and Tchaikovsky had had a crystal ball and looked 100 years into the future and watched Matthew Bourne's and Graeme Murphy's they might have just decided to stop with Sleeping Beauty and quit while they were ahead.

Pasmaroo, Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I have a feeling that although you love attending ballet and dance you're not completely au fait with ballet history, especially Swan Lake, which is probably the most mucked about with and revised by modern choreographers, ballet of all? Firstly The Imperial Russian Ballet, is one of those satellite troupes which sprang up after glasnost when soloists and corps members from the existing Russian companies started their own small-scale touring companies around the world. There's one in Wales in the UK, called Swansea Ballets Russes (I know, could you be more classy?) - the standards, soloists etc are varied. They're basically trading on the Mariinsky and Bolshoi's fame, the fame of Russian ballet without adding to it. There hasn't really been an Imperial ballet per se since before the Revolution. If you want to see Swan Lake, the classic work or art in its original or integral whole then your best bets are, Mariinsky, Bolshoi, Paris Opera Ballets and the Royal Ballet has a choreographically extremely faithful version to the Russian productions, (sadly Anthony Dowell, for reasons best known to himself, decided to let Yolanda Sonnabend, a very estravagant theatre designer have free reign with the production design in 1986 and it now looks like it was designed by a gay teenager on crack.) Pasmaroo, as rg stated, the ballet Swan Lake choreographed by the greatest classical choreographer of all time Marius Petipa in 1895 for the then Kirov is the format choreographically that exists till today. The fouettes all 32 have been existant and an integral part of the ballet since the very first Odette/Odile a ballerina named Pierina Legnani - and were indeed conceived to show off her technique. It was one of those moments in an art form which pushed the technique of the art foward. The classic format of Swan Lake remains the same regardless of production, in terms of dramaturgy, choreography the pas de deux etc with of course some variations in court dances, use of classical mime, divertissements and production design - but the essential white scenes, big swans, cygnets, pas de deux in all three acts between Siegfried, Odette and Odile follows the choreographic format as laid down by Petipa - (or near damn, as) As rg pointed out some productions push the prologue and act 1 together, actually most do, some companies for time issues may only have one interval but the story remains the same: Act 1: Prince Siegfried, a tedious, self-involved mummy's boy (and possible latent homosexual) overcomes his Oedipus complex when he discovers the pleasures of poultry and falls in love with Odette, a princess turned into a swan by evil von Rothbart. He pledges his undying love to her and promises to help her break the spell. Act 2: Siegfried has a birthday party. He's not very bright, as when Von Rothbart turns up with a very slutty looking Odette-a-like, he doesn't ask himself why she's acting that way or why she's suddenly so pally with the bad guy. He asks her to marry him and dooms Odette. Act 3: Siegfried asks Odette's forgiveness and they enter into a suicide pact. The End. Pasmaroo, did you actually mean the pas de deux which ends in the coda in Act 2 before Siegfried asks Odile to marry him? All a pas de six is, (and I'm really being literal here) is six people dancing together in a divertissement. Now, I was wondering about when you said lots of choreographers change Swan Lake for productions. It's true there are endless reworkings, reimaginings of Swan Lake, which is a pity because Petipa's Swan Lake is perfect. But the prevalent ethos of a lot of modern choreographers towards the classics seems to be, that if something's not broke, bludgeon it into bloody submission with a sledge hammer until its a pulped, bubbling choreographic mess of cheap tricks and dodgy juvenile subtexts. There's the homo-neurotic Matthew Bourne "all male" version, the Mats Ek version, Monument for a Dead Boy and indeed in Australia you have Graeme Murphy's really really really bad version which imagines Swan Lake as a love triangle based on Prince Charles, Lady Di and Camilla Parker Bowles - which is totally reworking it, it's Swan Lake, not Horse Lake. And those are the few I can remember off the top of my head, but the things is NONE of them are Swan Lake. It's a load of self-indulgent crap to the music of Tchaikovsky, and none of them have the fouettes, pas de deux etc because it's not classical ballet. Sorry rambling a bit, but from what I can see the Imperial Russian Ballet is performing the classical text of Petipa which I'm 100% certain will have the fouettes, the three grand pas de deux, the cygnets, big swans etc as laid out by Petipa and Tchaikovsky.

It wasn't taken from the Daily Mail? Well, I'm sorry, if I can't take umbrage I'm just not interested. The temerity!

My favourite was Desperately Seeking Susan. It was a musical of the 1984 film which also happened to be Madonna's acting debut set to... the musical hits of Blondie. I don't know what they were smoking when they came up with that one. But it kind of disappeared almost as soon as it opened. And a few years ago in London there was another musical that closed as soon as it opened called Leonardo. About, yes, you guessed it Leonardo Da Vinci. It became infamous for it's lyrics, one being and I swear I'm not making this up... mille grazie, up your arsey

Bart, I think that something's getting lost in translation here as we have a new phenomenon of show in London that this article in the Daily Mail is talking about in regards to the introduction of bouncers. In London for the past few years a genre of "musical" has sprung up in London's West End and this is a musical/show which uses the songs and back catalogue of popular rock/pop groups. The most famous example being of course Mamma Mia which is the only one which has transferred to a wider audience internationally. This genre also includes musicals based on films such as Dirty Dancing. These shows are really just pop tribute evenings and attract a mass audience who don't go to the theatre - they are NOT artistic events and even lower down on the sliding scale than say Lloyd Webber. They're cheap, easy to produce and lucrative - the theatre equivalent of American Idol. They're popular nights out and popular with rowdy stag party, hen party crowds for which they were primarily intended and created for. We have alcohol served in bars in theatres and in keeping with the nature of being a "good night out" yes, people do arrive at these events a little jolly, though sometimes more than a little jolly hence the bouncers being brought in on certain nights when there's a tendency to be rowdier. However, you can't drink booze in the auditoriums in London. Regarding the bit in that Daily Mail article which said that the lead in Dirty Dancing doesn't enter through the audience as he's afraid of being ripped to shreds by horny love-up women, well fifty years ago wasn't Elvis Presley in exactly the same position? The Beatles and Stones 40 years ago? It's really important to take on board the nature of the shows the Mail article was talking about. It's a genre of London based musical which is intended to be an all-out, low low low culture pop music tribute evening.

I'm sorry Leigh. Just relax and let it wash over you.

Okay, . Mashinka, I have no need to calm down, I was joking, do you actually think I'm the kind of person to use "temerity" and mean it? Though you do seem to like trawling for nuggets of misery of depravity. Which is essentially my point you can find an example or several hundred to justify and back up anything and in doing so detract from the whole. You think London is a hotbed of filthy, depraved excess, moral iniquity and frenzied, knife toting hoodies. I take a more moderate view. Chaque un a son gout - I prefer my taste, it means I don't see the worst in humanity and London, which for all it's shortcomings is great and still is. Actually Mashinka I think you miss the point. I 100% agree that everyone deserves to enjoy what they pay for, no matter what the show. However there was a strange dichotomy here where the story of a one-off man peeing at A Little Night Music was treated as some kind of urine soaked barometer for the decline of western civilisation. Peeing at Sondheim!!!!. I do think it's gross, yes, but it was a one off from a rather troubled man and won't unleash a Tsunami of urine flooding the theatres of London. And can I be perfectly honest, as gross as the story is, I think it's quite funny, it's just so inappropriate. I think Mashinka you need to lighten up a little. Those bouncers aren't in every performance, nor are they in theatres throughout London, but in a couple of shows which are more like pop concerts and on certain nights. Why can't you accept that this isn't such a big deal? They're there to encourage good behaviour. It's a problem for which the theatre managers have found a solution. What more is there to say? NO, Mashinka, no. It illustrates the level ONE man, one solitary individual sank to. No more, no less and if he is that strange, do you think he confines this behaviour to theatres alone? It says a great deal for the man, but NOTHING for theatre goers as a demographic. It was gross, nasty, but what would have been the point? How would charges have been pressed. If the police had been called it would have been mid performance, we would all have had to give statements, are two cretins really worth it? It took a while before we realised what was going on, they were discreet, to a point. And really who did they hurt? With behaviour like this it's best to ignore it, to credit it as being anything worth prosecuting, to credit idiots like that with enough importance to have upset you is giving them far, far far too much power. And do you really think it's only in London where people have inappropriate "relations"? Well, I think that's very sad Mashinka. To deny yourself pleasure and going to see a show with a friend that you both might enjoy on the back of one rather immoderate feature article is hurting no one but yourself. If you're that concerned ring the theatre or the Lyric Theatre's mangement company and ask to speak to the theatre manager about your concerns before booking tickets. Do I need to have an excuse? Or justify my deep, deep, deep dislike for the Mail? It's not a hang up, it's a totally reasonable reaction to a filthy right wing rag. Though there are millions of Daily Mail readers who'd disagree, but they're wrong and I'm right, because I'm right about absolutely everything. Mashinka, I'm sorry for your experiences and I'm not lessening them, but what can one say? Yes, we've all seen pretty horrendous stuff but I do firmly believe it's how one reacts to it that defines one as a victim. I'm sorry but I don't believe in the inherent evil of teenagers in hoodies, of humanity as a whole, though I'm not naive and I can also find a hundred examples which could blow my beliefs out the water if I let it. I think that woman was rather stupid to make you feel scared and threatened about a trip you take regularly - and says a great deal more about her than you. And that's why I think that Daily Mail article is equally grotty, it's making an issue out of a collection of one offs and exceptional circumstances and claiming it as an indication of the disintegration of society. On a related note you know that church in Covent Garden? One late afternoon I was using the short cut between the two streets via the church courtyard. There was pretty much no one else there and as I reached the gate on the other side to exit onto the street there was a huge gaggle of hoodied youths blocking the way talking amongst themselves. The very kind the Daily Mail regularly blames for all the UK's ills. As I approached them, I did wonder whether something was going to happen, well of course that thought does cross one's mind, "are they looking for trouble", no matter how moderate one is, you do respond to hype and tripe in the media. Anyway, one of the boys looked up, saw me approaching and suddenly said to his friends who were blocking my exit "oi, get out of his way" and the other boys seeing me, stepped aside. I felt guilty, for putting a load of media-influenced crap onto some teens who were just hanging out talking. This tale is a nothing tale, nothing happens, but it's no less significant than all the tales of misery and more significant because it just reaffirmed what I truly believe that fear is nothing more than a state of mind. And I'll be damned if a load of crap printed to fill out a page in the Daily Mail (and isn't even a proper story but cobbled together tidbits from several sources to make a typically restrained Mail feature) is going to make me afraid when there is nothing to fear.

Bart, That's the crux of the issue in a nutshell. The fact is certain shows, which attract a certain clientele will be having bouncers at Certain performances in order to keep the peace should trouble arise. It says nothing about the state of the UK only about these shows, certain members of the audience who could potentially cause a problem. Much the same way that security is present at rock concerts - that's what these shows are, pop music concerts and this is why it's vital to maintain a level head in assessing the Daily Mail article. Yes, peeing in the auditorium is nasty but it's the action of one rather strange man, he hastn't started a pandemic of audience members urinating in the aisles of British theatres. Yes Mashinka there will always be the odd wrong un who takes matters to extremes, but they are the minority, there are very few truly evil people knocking around and the vast majority of audience members in theatres, cinemas and performances throughout the world are there because they want to be, and because they want to enjoy the show. Alexandra talking about the vociferous nature of the US audiences being a case in point, the first time I watched dance in NY I was quite taken aback by how loud they were in showing their appreciation. I think that's why I hate the Daily Mail so much, it fosters this awful sense of apocolyptic doom, a sense that the UK is falling apart due to loose morals, bad parenting and Satanic excess. It's really not, London is safe as houses.

No Leigh it was NOT. We were in the back rows of the ground stalls where tickets at that time were £70 and I'd decided to treat myself, as did they. The thing is because we were in a "respectable" environment everyone around these two including me, just pretended nothing was going on and when lights went up these two were just so pleased with themselves as if they'd pulled off the crime of the century.

And you have the temerity to call me a snob after a statement like that? The Daily Mail is a filthy, scaremongering, right wing tabloid which loves tales of depravity, youth yobbism, to sell papers. It's well known for making up facts to fit the story they wish to portray. So in fact it's not snobbism on my part, if anything it's inverse snobbism, but do forgive me, I'm a Guardian reader. (The Guardian is a left wing, scaremongering broad sheet which makes up facts to fit its stories BTW). The story was NOT about high art, it's about a growing trend for theatre productions which are nothing more than frameworks for pop songs and the type of boozed up clientele those productions attract. Which is what I meant by the misguided notion that theatre is sacrosanct - these are basically X Factor, American Idol events it's not art. Which is where the bouncers come in on these shows and nowhere else. Of course that's not much of a story, so it had to be expanded to feature length. The guy with the weak bladder - it's third hand heresay from cast members, not saying it isn't true, I'm sure it is, and I do think a guy peeing in A Little Night Music is gross, but would it have been less gross in Mamma Mia? Or just a rather honest comment on the production? If he'd done it in Cats he might have just been marking his territory? Yes, texting is annoying, but no one's calling in bouncers for that, and they do ask you to switch off your phone and if you don't they do, yes they really do intervene if you annoy others in the audience - and it's not just yobs off their faces on crystal meth and alco pops who text - it's upper middle class people too! The kind of people who read the Daily Mail, even. And I do have to say, give me a texter any day of the week over the two very proper, upper middle class men who were in my row at the Royal Opera House in La Bayadere, who during the shades act started giving each other hand relief. And I don't see what my dislike of the Godot production has to do with your telling me to leave? I paid my money, a lot of it, and since box office rarely takes "I think this stinks" as a valid excuse for a refund, I decided to stick it out. If they guy was silently texting, so what? If not then yes, he's an inconsiderate idiot, but it's hardly a sign of the decline of western civilisation and once again do you think someone who buys a ticket for Beckett is going to buy a ticket for Thriller or We Will Rock you? The places employing bouncers. I'd like to know Mashinka exactly when London was this great crime free utopia you seem to imagine? Well we no longer have the plague, hangings for children stealing bread, rampant syphilis or bands of rogues knifing you for groats, it's illegal to pee, poo have sex in the streets now, the Royal Opera House is no longer a knocking shop, the floor of the Globe has hazlenut shells for decoration, not to soak up the urine, vomit, faeces. There's ample police presence, a woman can walk the streets without fear of being raped, touted, mugged etc Indeed the only place where London is still going to hell in a handbag is in nasty, right ring scaremongering tabloids like the Daily Mail. Mashinka you want to be outraged and disgusted that's your prerogative, but please give London a break, it's a great city and anyone wishing to visit, I promise you won't be going back to your respective countries in an air ambulance.

I think an element of moderacy should be taken in relation to this article. Firstly it's the Daily Mail, (for US members think Fox News, without the left-wing bias and sober reporting). This is a typical scare-mongering tactic that the Mail is famous for. The theatres hiring bouncers are ones producing pop-music shows which are becoming increasingly popular in London. It's basically a karaoke night strung together with set pieces and a flimsy storyline and as the theatre owners did say it's a boozed up night out, nothing more a great deal of the time. I think the reaction to this story stems more from the outdated notion that a theatre is some kind of hallowed or sacresanct place where great art is created. Having been to that Patrick Stewart Waiting for Godot, I can't say I blame the man for texting, it was boring as hell. The "piece" in the Mail also made those wonderful leaps of hyperbole and scandal it's famous for, the theatre manager assaulted by a drunk man who came into the theatre foyer didn't actually say whether or not the man was going to see the show - on a night out in London the streets are indeed full of drunken revellers. It's par for the course. Also the one off tale of a man urinating, the texting etc while bad behaviour aren't the norm. (Though texting increasingly is, but so what? It happens everywhere, it's not great sure, but it hardly merits 1000 words in a newspaper but is strung as a tag on the bouncer story to give it extra oomph. It really, really really isn't that bad in London, believe me, must have been a very slow day in the newsroom.

Dale, Stretton didn't even bother to fire them, I don't know if he actually legally could, but what he did do was not give leading soloists and principals any performances at all. The most famous case of jumping over pushing was Sarah Wildor, who in the first year of Stretton's dictatorship, sorry, directorship, had her work load reduced to a single performance of Giselle, it was at that point that she walked. Stretton also very publically stated that the quality of the dancers was sub par and that they'd have to audition for every role, the only two dancers he rated were Rojo & Cojocaru and he placed on their shoulders a crippling workload which led to serious injuries for both ballerinas.

Hi Paul, The programme at the Phoenix Theatre in London that Ashton saw and made his remark "You are a poet, and I like poetic ballets" about, consisted of Nocturnes, Winterbranch and Story. It's the same programme that MacMillan walked out of halfway through. I just loved Cunningham, he was the absolute best.

Beatrice, Please, just leave me alone? Okay?

Thank you Beatrice for such an incisive character analysis, it makes me feel so validated to be so perfectly understood. However, I would hope that others who've actually read my numerous posts don't view me in such a negative light. Though I agree you and I will never see eye to eye as you seem to have a need to misconstrue debate for attack and ironically attack on a personal level people who disagree with you, hence I am a person of "extremely limited perpective" - though may I point out as limited as I am, as passionate, opinionated or heated as I may get in discussing an issue I never attack on a personal level. The reason why I somewhat glibly perhaps put a "black and white" perspective on such a complex issue is precisely that as Leigh stated this thread is going round and round in circles and nothing new is being said. Helene I agree totally that these things have every right to be discussed - but how much more can be said? You quite rightly wrote out the NYCB statement as to the deficit and need for trimming back the company and that's as much as any of us are going to be able to refer to when discussing this issue without conjecture, personal bias as to dancers rights and dancers we love and our own feelings about company policy and mismanagement, or rather the way the company is run. One of the worst examples of press statements not tallying with how "I" see an issue was the Cunningham press statement in the NY Times, when Trevor Carlson "denounced" the artistry of the sacked Daniel Squire and Holley Farmer as a reason for their sackings. Well, four months earlier I saw Squire and Farmer absolutely tear up the stage in blinding performances of Crises, Xover, Biped & Split Sides. So from Carlson's statement in four months their artistry deteriorated to such an extent they no longer were worth paying or belonging to a company they'd devoted their lives to? Of course not. The thing is unless Peter Martins says words to the effect that his house in the Hamptons needs reroofing, and new plumbing and so taking a substantial salary cut at this time just wasn't an option - so the cuts had to come somewhere else, or some other major clanger, what can be gained from increasingly debating an issue where we know all the facts as presented by the company and know how we feel personally on certain issues and all that can concluded are the same points over and over again, with nothing more than conjecture and bias to distinguish one point from another?

Mimsyb, I agree with Leigh that this is going round the houses and getting nowhere, especially as we're now firmly in the realm of speculation and conjecture. Safe to say there are two opposing viewpoints here: Those who feel deeply for the dancers involved and who for some time have been disenchanted with the management and artistic policy of NYCB: And those who view the massive payments of the top tier administration as deserved and feel that the dancers may in some way have brought their sackings on themselves. It's time that both sides agree to disagree. However, Mimsyb, as has been stated here the corps are on one year contracts - the AGMA contracts for NYCB are downloadable at the AGMA website -, renewable at the start of each year and the reason given for their termination is cost and cost alone. The reasons for termination are unique for each agreement for different companies - in the case of NYCB Martins views it that they're not "firing" the dancers they're simply not renewing their contracts. The saving of $1m and loss of over a fifth of the corps de ballet is to be made up by the intake of far cheaper apprentices. Though since apprentices can only be taken in for one year before they legally have to be let go or hired into the corps how this "cost saving" device is going to function in the long term is up for debate. One wonders if this time next year there'll be further interviews from a host of disgruntled apprentices let go before NYCB had to commit full time? One could conjecture that were there breaches of company protocol or examples of gross misconduct on the dancers part these would have been cited. You're not going to get to the bottom of this or "understand" - it seems purely economic and whatever internecine politics and machinations may exist will probably never be known.

Beatrice, The flip side of questioning the dancers in the way that you do with no basis in fact either reported or known, is that one could conjecture that perhaps the hidden politics are more sordid - that it's not the dancers who sinned against management but management against the dancers. Perhaps one or several of the dancers had been sexually propositioned by someone high up in administration, offered roles for favours, advancement for services rendered and when they refused marked their card permanently, set them up for dismissal. Perhaps someone on the board or a major donor has a beef with one of the dancers or their family etc etc etc These theories are useless, dangerous, damaging and completely and utterly untrue - I would never seriously suggest them but equally hurtful is questioning those dancers work ethic, attitude and usefulness - the potential existence of "bad seeds". , rotting the barrel. We don't know anything, except the facts as presented. Conjecture is endless, potentially libellous and ultimately worthless. And the dangerous thing about putting these theories and indeed the theories that you do forward is that they're not true, none of it's true unless proven to be a contributing factor or a given reason for termination of contract. And that's why when you do it gets me upset for sure, because it's calling into question the life commitment of a group of highly talented, dedicated individuals who are going through utter turmoil; and the statement that people who are of worth aren't fired is absolutley specious and proven wrong by the deluge of misery the world is experiencing as highly trained, dedicated and industrious people the world over are losing their jobs, not just in dance, but in all fields. Indeed, we should have heeded the advice to sack the useless years ago by trimming the fat from merchant banks. I used Kistler as an example not because she's Martin's wife, but because I've seen her dance recently and she was the most obvious example for me of a dance establishment that's doing something wrong by presenting a dancer of such limited and diminished ability as their best. I could say this too of Yvonne Boree, Nilas Martins: or Albert Evans and Wendy Whelan who I saw dance seven years ago and loved and when I saw Evans and Whelan last year was saddened by the dimishment in their abilities. One thing I'm glad about from the NY Times article is knowing that Max Van Der Sterre is one of the fired: glad that I know but sad that it's him. I saw him last year and even in the corps I have to say he stood out because he's the kind of dancer I love. You could see he has a very difficult body for dance, it's not a naturally flexible one, you could see that where some of his more physically gifted compatriots flew through the air with the greatest of ease, naturally, everything for him had been a challenge to achieve - that technique was something that had been hard to come by and his dancing reflected that in its intensity and the way in which he made technique work for him. I love dancers who buck the trend for hyper flexible, facile and technical who have that core of iron - those are the kind of dancers companies need, they're wonderful examples - and it's just a crying shame that his worth was held in such low regard.

No one is argueing that internecine politics and backstage dramas take place and why the Sword of Damacles fell on those 11. The NY Times article however, was not a "pity party" but a reasoned and emotive look at a group of dancers whose lives are in turmoil due to the losing of their jobs. It's not an angry or vindictive piece and none of the dancers who spoke seem to be laying blame, nor are they claimng to be perfect or persecuted. The Kistler issue is an important one, as she is a dancer who's long since past her best and whose performances are sporadic and often poor. Yet, because she is on a principal contract can't be "let go" and whose salary is incommensurate with the number and quality of performances. This is a dance site and yes, perhaps the bias will be with the dancer rather than administration by the nature of the people who post here - and this is a good thing for this specific issue because blank press statemens from administration about firing of dancers is the stock in trade of companies wanting to make cuts; as several people have commented they're sure NYCB would prefer this issue to go quietly away and forums such as these keep that debate alive. Nor is it just NYCB, one of the most egregious examples of this current firing policy is with the Cunningham company where three of his senior dancers were summararily dismissed with two months notice and the company administrator made a press release to the NY Times impugning their artistry. Three marvellous dancers who between them had devoted almost 40 years of their lives to Cunningham Foundation were rubbished. If you want to read a cooler interview than Sophie Flack's about the pain of dismissal than Holley Farmer's (of the Cunningham company) interview with Gia Kourlas in Time Out NY is a good bet. Instead of questioning the discipline and commitment of these 11, six of whom are choosing to remain anonymous, why not question the huge sums paid to the principals, many of whom are well past their best, turning in mediocre performances and yet are tied with golden handcuffs to the company via their contracts? No one is suggesting that these dancers are paragons of human virtue, but one thing about this site it's made up of people who love dancers and who know that those dancers are the most important factor, the lifeblood of companies and who would rather champion them and blanche at their expendibility than take a conservative hardline that bureaucracy and administration know best due to droite de seigneur.